"I'm the evil mastermind behind the scenes. I'm the wicked puppeteer who pulls the strings and makes you dance. I'm your writer."
Read quote
13 likes
Evil quotes
Evil
5.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Evil
Browse quotes that often appear alongside evil — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Evil quotes (page 25 of 265)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Evil is whatever distracts."
Read quote
13 likes
"A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil."
Read quote
13 likes
"My brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary, however, is the evil; necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-biting among the virtues."
Read quote
13 likes
"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them."
Read quote
13 likes
"The person who in shaky times also wavers only increases the evil, but the person of firm decision fashions the universe."
Read quote
13 likes
"Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good."
Read quote
13 likes
"The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity."
Read quote
13 likes
"It was with good reason that God commanded through Moses that the vineyard and harvest were not to be gleaned to the last grape or grain; but something to be left for the poor. For covetousness is never to be satisfied; the more it has, the more it wants. Such insatiable ones injure themselves, and transform God's blessings into evil."
Read quote
13 likes
"So how do theists respond to arguments like this? [The Argument from Evil] They say there is a reason for evil, but it is a mystery. Well, let me tell you this: I'm actually one hundred feet tall even though I only appear to be six feet tall. You ask me for proof of this. I have a simple answer: it's a mystery. Just accept my word for it on faith. And that's just the logic theists use in their discussions of evil."
Read quote
12 likes
"Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' - or else not."
Read quote
12 likes
"Good and evil increase at compound interest. That's why the little decisions we make every day are of infinite importance."
Read quote
12 likes
"To a good man nothing that happens is evil."
Read quote
12 likes
"I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils."
Read quote
12 likes
"It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else. Nothing has a more diverse and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections."
Read quote
12 likes
"Barbarity, caprice; these qualities, however nominally disguised, we may universally observe from the ruling character of the deity in all regular religions."
Read quote
12 likes
"Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other."
Read quote
12 likes
"The worst crimes are not committed by evil degenerates, but by decent and intelligent people taking 'pragmatic' decisions."
Read quote
12 likes
"One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power."
Read quote
12 likes
"The greatest, like Rembrandt, paint a gallant, a hag, and a carcass with equal passion and rapture; they love the truth as it is. They do not admit that anything can be ugly or evil; its existence justifies itself. This is because they know themselves to be part of an harmonious unity; to disdain any item of it would be to blaspheme the whole. The Thelemite is able to revel in any experience soever; in each he recognizes the tokens of ultimate Truth. It is surely obvious, even intellectually, that all phenomena are interdependent, and therefore involve each other."
Read quote
12 likes